Poetry

In the end there is always a little change in the pockets, a few suns and moons you couldn’t spend.   Nearby the cloud of a would-be breath doesn’t move, reprieved but useless.   This candle will change all that.   Use the last bit of air for light, and heat the hand that shields…

When I change lanes on I-70 North toward the St. Louis airport, my father points to my sideview mirrors and asks how I like them angled. He tells me he keeps his tilted to show only a trace of his car, a shadow, enough to see where it ends and the asphalt picks up. And…

That’s how much time they give you to bribe the hall of records for the paperwork you bribe the foreman to sign, swearing you know nothing and owe nothing—no loans, no debts before you bribe a woman to sell your pots and pans, plates, plants, rugs, and record player, so you can bribe a dentist…

for TP The woman down the hall has a girlfriend. When they fell in love the sea was a finger. It pushed them both in the belly. It rubbed their lips. It ran itself up and down their thighs. Then they got married. The sea came to the wedding and ate the shrimp cocktail. Had…

You said yourself, if it has a mouth you mustn’t trust it. May you lose this fight. Dragging the double-blade over your leg in the shower you think of his face. Such power you found in bathing him, his tattoos—needled with guitar strings and Bic ink while others kept watch down-tier: a woman with seven…

3 In hospital I convalesced and read the melodrama presented in Le Figaro: “On the morning of 16 November, it is alleged, Professor of Philosophy Louis Althusser strangled his wife during what has been ruled a psychotic break.” I am not psychotic, though I have indeed killed my wife. She is dead, it’s true. Not…

What a reprieve from all this stultifying heat. And all the threats implicit in that heat: the sweep and snare of blackberry, razor barb of concertina wire. The bluish teasel nearly chafed you with its bracts. You’ve made it through some muck with your absolute body still intact. So far, the Camp Far West lake…

My brothers are notorious. They have not been to prison. They have been imprisoned. The prison is not a place you enter. It is no place. My brothers are notorious. They do regular things, like wait. On my birthday they say my name. They will never forget my name. What is that knowledge? Is it…

for the Wu Tang Clan and 1992   Shaolin’s flowers, imperial and ready for slaughter. Bobby Digital wears the wings of the only saint he knows. Come blessed angel with your skull-cup of blood. Enter this chamber with your black sword and a streetcar full of flagging desire. When the children ask for water, give…